The Nashville songwriting and publishing communities voiced their outrage Thursday after the revelation that the Department of Justice will not recommend any changes to the consent decrees governing ASCAP and BMI, but instead plans to enforce 100 percent music licensing.

The DOJ informed ASCAP and BMI, the nonprofit organizations that handle licensing for musical compositions and represent most of the nation's publishers and songwriters, that no changes will be coming to the consent decrees after two years of discussions.

Instead, the DOJ told the groups that it interprets their consent decrees to require something called "100 percent licensing."

Under such a model, the minority owner of a song's composition copyright may license the song, even if the owner only has a 1 percent stake. Under the current common business practice, ASCAP and BMI negotiate a licensing deal based on their market shares and are only responsible for the songs under their purview.

“This proposed rule is devastating and must be reviewed," Cooper said. "We should protect creative rights, not take them away. This hurts songwriters and musicians and may even violate copyright laws."

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, said the response she has heard "seems universal" against the DOJ's move. She said she hopes the DOJ will reconsider.

Songwriters and publishers expressed fear that the DOJ's new opinion could threaten the practice of co-writing songs, something that is particularly popular in Nashville among country music songwriters.

"The longstanding practice has been for writers from ASCAP to write with writers from BMI or SESAC and not worry about which (performance rights organization) their collaborators are with," said Marc Driskill, executive vice president with the publishing firm Sea Gayle Music in Nashville. "Now, if this becomes the law of the land, it will be the first question you would ask. Because why would you want to work with someone under another (performance rights organization) and give them the ability to license your song?"

The Nashville Songwriters Association International, the leading songwriters' trade group, expressed concerns that the DOJ recommendations could curb the creative process and complicate the royalty payouts by ASCAP and BMI.

The two performance rights organizations operate under federal consent decrees for antitrust reasons.

The two groups asked the DOJ to allow their member publishers and songwriters to withdraw some of their licensing rights, so that they can strike separate digital deals, but keep their terrestrial radio licensing with the performance rights organization of their choice. The DOJ told ASCAP and BMI representatives this week that partial rights withdrawal is not going to happen.

BMI President and CEO Michael O'Neill confirmed the 100 percent licensing proposal in a news release Thursday. The DOJ's official announcement about the consent decree changes is expected to be unveiled in the coming days.

“This would create Armageddon in the professional songwriter community," NSA Executive Director Bart Herbison said. "Since one performing rights society does not hold information on co-writers who are members of other societies, there is no effective way to make sure those co-writers are paid."

"Unfortunately, the DOJ indicated that because of the complexities of the transition to this 100 percent licensing requirement, it will not consider the updates we requested to our consent decrees at this time but, instead, may revisit those issues after a transition period," Matthews said. "We strongly disagree with this view and we are disappointed that the DOJ has chosen to focus on this issue, which was not raised by any of the parties to the decrees. Rather than fostering more competition and innovation in the modern music marketplace, we believe that this approach will only create confusion, chaos and instability, harming both music creators and users."

Songwriters and publishers have said the consent decrees need to be updated in order to keep up with the digital music revolution. Music streaming is booming in popularity, but the federal laws and rules that govern how much music publishers and songwriters are paid have not caught up.

Herbison worried that if 100 percent licensing takes effect, publishers might forbid their songwriters from co-writing with writers whose songs are licensed by a different performance rights organization. He said it is also possible that ASCAP and BMI would have to build new accounting tools, which would be expensive, to accommodate 100 percent licensing.

"Administrative costs will soar, and there is a strong likelihood that songwriters may now only write with songwriters from the same performing rights society," he said.

In his statement Thursday, O'Neill pointed out that 100 percent licensing has never been the industry standard.

"We are disappointed with the DOJ’s recommendation, which after years of hard work and discussion brings us no closer to much-needed consent decree reform than when we started," O'Neill said. "Instead, the DOJ chose to address only the issue of 100 percent licensing, a concept we never raised and one that the marketplace has worked out on its own over the last half-century."

O'Neill said the DOJ is fixing a problem that isn't broken.

"We are surprised that the DOJ feels it needs to restructure a world that is efficient into one that we believe won’t be," he said. "We are also extremely disappointed that the DOJ did not take into account the nearly 13,000 BMI songwriters who strongly voiced their concerns over a shift to a 100 percent licensing model and the creative and financial impact it would have on their ability to create music."

Earlier this year, the U.S. Copyright Office, which is housed in the Library of Congress, expressed its opposition to 100 percent licensing as well. The DOJ raised the question of enforcing 100 percent licensing earlier in 2016.

“Earlier this year in Washington, D.C., I explained to DOJ that our profession was already decimated and how mandating 100 percent licensing could put the final nail in our coffin,” said Lee Thomas Miller, songwriter and NSAI president. “I am stunned and sickened. DOJ did not take the impact on songwriters into account when issuing this ruling."

It's unclear how ASCAP and BMI will respond. The two groups could continue conducting business as usual and therefore provoke the DOJ to file an antitrust lawsuit.

"ASCAP and BMI met yesterday with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice and heard its proposal regarding our respective consent decrees," they said in the statement. "We are both evaluating the information presented and informed the DOJ we will respond to its proposal in the near term."

The recommendations also figure to put a renewed emphasis on federal copyright reform, which has been actively debated in Congress for the past three years. There's a sense within the music industry that an initial legislative proposal could be offered in Congress this summer.

Speculation was rampant on Music Row on Thursday that the enforcement of 100 percent licensing could prompt the major publishing companies — Sony, Universal and Warner — to completely withdraw their licensing rights from ASCAP and BMI.

“We are incredibly disappointed by the unjust way the department has decided to interpret the consent decrees," said Martin Bander, Sony/ATV chairman and CEO. "Its decision is going to cause a tremendous amount of uncertainty and chaos in a marketplace that has worked well for years and will adversely impact everyone in the licensing process, including PROs, licensees, music publishers and most of all songwriters who can ill afford to hire lawyers to figure out their rights under this inexplicable ruling. The decision raises more questions than answers”